Tuesday 19 April 2011 12.45 EDT
First published on Tuesday 19 April 2011 12.45 EDT

In days gone by, British ambassadors would wait until they were leaving before firing off a valedictory despatch that revealed what they really thought about their foreign hosts. Not Fergus Cochrane-Dyet, the high commissioner to Malawi, whose use of undiplomatic language while still in the post may now hasten his exit.

Cochrane-Dyet was quoted in a leaked cable to London describing Malawi's president Bingu wa Mutharika as "ever more autocratic and intolerant of criticism".

As if to prove the point, Malawi's foreign ministry in Lilongwe summoned him on Monday and ordered him to leave the country this week.

There was a sharp response from Britain, where the Foreign Office insisted that declaring its man "persona non grata" would be unacceptable. Any such action would have "consequences", it warned.

In the leaked memo to the foreign secretary, William Hague, Cochrane-Dyet said that in Malawi the "governance situation continues to deteriorate in terms of media freedom, freedom of speech and minority rights".

According to the Nation newspaper, which published the correspondence, he said rights activists had reported a campaign of intimidation through threatening anonymous phone calls.

"They seem genuinely afraid," Cochrane-Dyet wrote. "The office of one high-profile activist has allegedly been raided and his house broken into. There are unsubstantiated rumours that the ruling party is forming a youth wing modeled on the Young Pioneers used as a tool of repression during the country's three-decade dictatorship."

Britain, Malawi's main bilateral donor, cut aid by £3m last year after the purchase of a presidential jet at a cost of more than £8m. British officials said they were concerned about the purchase in the impoverished nation that relies on donor support for up to 40% of its development budget and the salaries of its 169,000 civil servants. Mutharika defended the new jet, saying it was cheaper to run it than hire an aircraft each time he wanted to travel abroad.

The British diplomat was quoted as saying that "for donors, the local political relationship has definitely got worse [although working relations with most key ministries remain good].

"Some ambassadors have been summoned by the foreign minister for a dressing down, others [including me] have been summoned by the president's brother [Peter] for gentler delivery of the same message: stop supporting civil society to destabilise the government."

Cochrane-Dyet said donors had responded robustly. "We deny the accusation, our development goals require more stability not less, far more of our assistance goes through government than through NGOs."

Cochrane-Dyet said that given "our huge investment in Malawi development, the UK interest is for these tensions to be defused.

"Our leverage is limited and must be used carefully with this combative president. We want the government to reverse its two-year slide on governance issues, mend fences with faith groups and civil society and adopt a more open approach to dissenting views."

On the other hand, he wrote that "we want civil society to be less confrontational".

He warned there was "no reason for optimism as the political temperature is likely to rise further ahead of elections in 2014 when Mutharika steps down", but added that "the effect of a serious cut in overseas aid for the fragile Malawian economy and for development would be serious ... the 75% of Malawians who live on less than $1 per day would suffer most."

In London, the acting permanent under secretary, Sir Geoffrey Adams, summoned Malawi's charge d'affaires to the Foreign Office on Tuesday to convey the foreign secretary's strong concern at suggestions that Cochrane-Dyet could be expelled.

"Sir Geoffrey made clear to the charge d'affaires that such an action would be unacceptable," the Foreign Office said. "Mr Cochrane-Dyet is an able and effective high commissioner, who retains the full confidence of the British government.

"Sir Geoffrey added that if the government of Malawi pursued such action there were likely to be consequences affecting the full range of issues in the bilateral relationship. He urged the Malawian authorities, through the charge d'affaires, not to proceed down such a road."

Malawi has recently drawn criticism from donor countries, including Britain, over "certain negative trends" including a new law that allows publications to be banned if deemed contrary to the public interest.

Mutharika, who ends his two terms as president in 2014 and is likely to hand over power to his brother Peter, often accuses local independent newspapers of negative reporting about Malawi.

In 2009, he threatened to shut down newspapers he accused of lying when the weekly Malawi News, owned by the family of the late dictator Kamuzu Banda, reported that up to a million people would need food aid.

Mutharika, who has made the country self-sufficient in food through the $180m subsidy fertiliser programme given to more than a million peasant farmers, demands that he be given kudos because half Malawi's 12 million citizens previously faced starvation.